We decided to surprise my parents by showing up unannounced in Oregon for Thanksgiving. We flew the red eye flight and got to Portland at 6am Thanksgiving morning. After grabbing breakfast we woke mom up to let us in the house. She was shocked but happy to see us.
Because of everyone's travel & work schedule, we did our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. There was over 20 of the family there. I got to see both of my grandmothers and all of my nephew & nieces. I had 2 nephews & 3 nieces that I had never met before. It's been 3 years since we've been down here. It was really good to connect with everyone. The one regret I have for living in Alaska is that I'm so far from the rest of family.
We'll be spending a total of 10 days here. We are spending time with my parents & getting some shopping down. We also took a couple of days to drive across the state to Milton-Freewater to see some friends who have moved there from Alaska. It was an incredible drive over & back along the Columbia River. And it was even better to spend a little time with some incredible people who we miss very much. I was going to include some pictures of the drive, but they are on another computer & I'm too lazy to get up...
The Journey will resume when I return home. The complete lack of results in the last month do not give me much motivation, but I can't give up... My goal a few months ago was to be back down to 315 for this trip. That was my weight before I lost momentum back in May. I completely failed on that goal. I was also wanting to be 299 by the end of the year. That's not going to happen either. I also wanted to be 271 by March 24th, 2012, which would be 100 pounds lost in 2 years. That goal
*might* be doable if my body will start responding to the exercise.
I just remember I could grab the pictures off of facebook:
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| The mighty Columbia River |
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| Mount Hood |
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| Multnomah Falls |
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| Our rental car. I've had it up to 108 MPH so far... |
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| A recreation of Stonehedge built in 1918 as a WW I memorial |
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| The vineyards behind where we stayed in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. |
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| We saw hundreds of these wind turbines on the drive. |
2 comments:
HI Todd, I'm glad you were able to visit your folks and friends. My mom lives back in Ohio and the trip is so long and miserable to say nothing of expensive, that I kind of made up my mind that I would fly into Boise next time and drive the rest of the way. I don't like the way the airlines treat the very people they count on to make a living.
I like your pictures- with the exception of the wind turbines. I hate to see those things clogging up the landscape. I'm surprised the environmentalists are ok with those obnoxious things sticking up everywhere. When we visited Amber in Iowa a few years ago there were a bunch there too. I loved the picture of the falls. I was a little surprised by how brown some of the area was there- is it high dessert? Did I spell that wrong? I think you know what I mean. Anyway, have a good time with your family.
Tom,
Yeah, the area east of the Cascades is high desert. It's a real neat area.
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